A warm-up is just a little movement to get the muscles warm, some light stretching, or a quick bike ride before a lift … right?
Well not exactly; while it is important to increase your internal body temperature before exercise, your warm up should be active, intentional, and specific.
Utilizing active movements for your warm-up takes advantage of a process called “post-activation potentiation” which increases the strength, pliability, and coordination of a muscle after it has been used. By incorporating the proper exercises into your warm up you can prime the muscles you will be using throughout your workout.
Being Intentional means choosing warm-up movements that will carry over into the movements needed to complete your workout: Going on a run? Wake your hips up! Bench pressing? Fire up those rotator cuffs! By being intentional with warm-up selection you can maximize your performance, and reduce your risk of injury.
Finally, your warm up should be specific to your own personal needs. This involves knowing what possible weaknesses your body has, what the demands of your activity are, and selecting exercises that will help you compensate for those weaknesses. This usually takes the form of activating accessory muscles that work in different planes of movement than your workout, but that will help support the primary movers and support your joints!
By creating a structured warm up using these fundamentals you can properly ready your body for any intense activity while also keeping yourself injury free and ready to keep moving!!